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I'm pretty suspicious of the methodology used here. Floodgate is #1 because they have 2 partners and one of them is an Asian woman? Bessemer is near the bottom and Greylock is near the top, despite the fact that they employed the VERY SAME female investor -- in fact, Bessemer first! And anyone who thinks a bunch of Asian males on YC's investment committee will be favorable to Asian women has never had an Asian brother. But hey, mo' data better right?

It is a much more fundamental conversation about what the future of American society should look like and âwhoâ should be shaping it. If a handful of predominantly white men are building or hand-picking the technology companies that touch hundreds of millions or billions of customers around the world, what defaults are embedded into these products and business models that further entrench inequity? It becomes a more pressing question as the technology industry moves from purely software-based companies toward businesses that touch and allocate finite resources in the real world like in labor, transit, land-use, real estate, health care and education â where equity is a major concern for public policy makers.

Palihapitiyaâs firmÂ Social + CapitalÂ and The Information pulled data on 71 firms representing more than $160 billion in assets under management and broke out the racial and gender mix of theÂ investmentÂ leadership. This distinction is key because many firms have women or minorities, but they might be in non-investing roles likeÂ marketing or HR. Â Women, for example, make up 60 percent of non-investing roles at venture firms in the survey, but only 8 percent of the senior investment team.Â (You can go through the entire dataset here.)

Palihapitiya said he was motivated to do this because if the big tech companies and startups like Slack start takingÂ diversity more seriously, so should the firms and investors funding them.

âWe need a wake up call on Sand Hill Road. We need to recapture our potential and open the doors. Invite more people into the decision making: young people, Blacks, Latinos, females, LGBT and others who arenât necessarily part of the obvious majority. Surround ourselves with a more diverse set of experiences and maybe we will prioritize a more diverse set of things. Maybe we will find more courage to do the hard things.â